


Breakthrough

by bobtaire



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 1x03 Extraordinary, 1x04 The Man on the Moon, Angst, Ben's POV, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, I'm Sorry, Physical hurt, Pre-Canon, Protective Ben, Protective Ben Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Sibling Bonding, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, kind of, they make me emotional
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-07 11:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17960012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobtaire/pseuds/bobtaire
Summary: "That's the real torture, if you gotta know. Watching your brother take for granted everything you lost and pissing it all away."Or the one where Ben visits his other siblings, and understands Klaus is not the only one who fucks up, he's just the less subtle.Sometimes, Ben disappears.Not that he cares, Ben's free to live his life - poor word choice, free to live his death - as he damn well please.Besides, he never stays gone for long. But Klaus doesn't think that, because he doesn't care, he doesn't even notice, doesn't he?





	1. If I Could Only Reach You

2012

 

Sometimes, Ben disappears.

It usually happens while he is snorting or injecting himself with stuff, but he always is, so there's no real correlation here. Not that he cares, Ben's free to live his life - poor word choice, free to live his _death_ \- as he damn well please.

Besides, he never stays gone for long. But Klaus doesn't think that, because he doesn't care, he doesn't even notice, doesn't he?

It takes him a couple of tries before the needle finds his vein. As he pushes the plunger down, he wonders where Ben might have gone this time. Then the high comes, and he can't get himself to care anymore.

 

The house is empty a lot these days, it feels wrong, and silent, so silent Ben can almost hear his own steps as he wanders around.

"That's ridiculous," he says to the empty hallways "I don't make sounds like that anymore."

He doesn't know how he is supposed to feel about this - it was never a joyful place, but it used to feel lively at least, now it is as alive as he is, maybe less. He doesn't know how anyone can live here.

He doesn't miss the house per se, he hates it as much as Klaus does, but things were slightly better there. For one, he was alive.

He misses his brothers though, from time to time. They were never close, but he grew up with them, the least he can do is check up on them when he is not busy knocking some sense into Klaus' head.

Right now, Luther is the one he worries about the most. He's the only one still at the house since Vanya moved out, almost a year ago, and that's not good. He's going crazy already, and he's only been here for ten minutes, he can't imagine what it must be like to be alone as long as Luther has, that's why he goes to him.

Luther may not see him or talk to him, but Ben feels better knowing he is not alone, even if he doesn't know that.

He's not surprised Luther stayed, not entirely, if anything he is impressed by it. Luther has embraced the role Father's given him completely, no wonder he's Number One, he's the only one who can handle it.

Nevertheless, he doesn't handle solitude as well, Ben can see it.

He finds Luther staring at Klaus' empty room. He's been doing that a lot lately. It's not always Klaus', Ben has seen him checking everyone's bedroom at least once. Luther even went all the way to Five's room a couple of times. He never did that when they were at home. He checks Allison’s room every day, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

It's almost funny he is the one he looks for right now, considering no one ever paid much attention to him while he was there. He tried to be noticed as much as he could, of course, but that's just part of who Klaus is, and after a while it stopped working.

Not that they didn't care about him, it was just a very Klaus move to disappear without explanation for hours or days at a time.

Ben finds himself wondering what the house would be like if Klaus were here, just like Luther is doing, or maybe he wants to know where Klaus is right now.

Ben has tried many times to get Klaus to see their siblings - he doesn't necessarily want him to come home, that's bad for everyone, but he does think brothers should be here for each other, and they all clearly need it. Not just Luther or Klaus, everyone.

He knows that since he died the relationships between the siblings have grown worse by the day until they finally split up. It was just a matter of time, but it still hurts to know Klaus hasn't seen any of them in almost six years.

It only lasts a moment, then Luther is back in the present.  "You should call him," Ben says "he wants to talk to you as much as you do." That's a lie, a pathetic one too and Ben knows it. Klaus doesn't want to talk to anyone, he just wants to get high, forget his own name and all of his problems.

Klaus' life is miserable, but it's how he wants it.

Luther doesn't hear him anyway. He goes to the kitchen and makes himself some cereals, and he's a big guy, but he looks small sitting at the table, and he probably feels that way too, Ben can tell from the way he sits, from the tension in his shoulder, like there's a weight they cannot lift.

And Ben wants to help, that's why he came in the first place, that's why he watches this shitshow his brother is pulling, this cry for help that's just as unsettling and unhealthy as Klaus'. But at least Klaus can hear him, he may be ignoring him most of the time, but he can talk to him. Luther can't.

Ben clenches his fists, and the lights flicker. Luther tenses and looks up, confused. He dismisses it quickly, but Ben is still glad he had made some sort of contact with him, even if it's something as insignificant as that.

He's sure he has not done that, those cinematographic things have never really worked before, but it's a comforting thought, he's willing to accept it this time, no questions asked.

After that, there's not much contact. When Klaus is not around Ben can't do much, besides watch Luther. He probably wouldn't know what to say anyway, he's not used to quiet people anymore, not since he started to spend so much time with Klaus. That works well because Klaus does most of the talking and Ben can focus on being the smart half of the duo. But there's no duo this time, he and Luther are nothing like that.

They've never been a duo, they were barely brothers when Ben was alive, they were too different and so unwilling to listen to one another. They did it almost with each of the siblings, and their conflicts were never just as violent or deep as Luther and Diego's ones. Wheres Diego would make a scene, fight, throw stuff at his brother, Luther and Ben's arguments would be staring contests and sharp words, there was no communication whatsoever, and Ben would usually lose them.

The way he died, if possible, made it worse, at least for Luther, he blames himself, he always does. The blame, Ben understands, comes with the role.

He shouldn't fell this way, Ben wants to tell him, he realized soon enough there was no point being angry, being angry at Luther was even more pointless and stupid, he had no fault.

So Ben watches his brother messing around all day long, because what else can he do, and occasionally interrupts his vow of silence to criticize Luther's hobbies.

"What about you take a walk, maybe get a coffee, like normal people?"

"There are easier ways to kill time, you must know that."

"Is that milk?"

It's useless - and boring, to be honest -, so Ben doesn't know why he stays so long, and he has almost resolved to go back to whatever kind of overdose Klaus is trying to get this time when the speaker announces a new mission, and he decides to wait. It's just a couple of hours, how bad can it be?

 

It is bad. It is worse than bad.

The day he died, his spirit detached from his body almost immediately, he saw all the chances they took with him, all the medical procedures they tried and felt the pain that came with each of them when they failed. He thought that there could never be anything as horrifying as witnessing your own death both as a spectator and a protagonist.

What he sees now it's almost as terrifying as that, it feels the same. He can nearly see his own body under Luther's. And the fear - the fear is the same he felt the day he died, and the day Klaus first OD, and the day Five didn't come home.

He closes his eyes, and all of that comes back, all of the traumas and the times they barely got out from death situations in one piece, and the one time he didn't, and suddenly he is back there, fighting for his life.

"Get that gear off him!" say both past-Reginald and present-Reginald, there's urgency in their voices and Ben doesn't know what's happening. His chest hurts.

The room is frantic, there's someone on the gurney, but Ben can't quite understand who it is. Who is injured? Is it him?

The corpse on the gurney groans in pain like he can't breathe. Ben's breaths are too fast and not nearly enough deep.

Luther.

"What's happening?" Ben asks, no, he shouts "What did they do?" no one answers him, like they can't hear him. He shouts again, begging for answers and it hurts his lungs, his chest, everything to scream like that.

 "It burns so much!" he cries like his wounds are all of a sudden open and bleeding again.

"Quickly!" Reginald orders, and Mom shock Luther's chest. Nothing happens, a few seconds pass "Mom, do something!"

"Again." Reginald's tone is urgent, scared, but seems too calm in this situation, how is he so calm? "Damn it!"

Years ago, that was the moment Ben died, as Reginald felt his pulse and cursed, he realized he was gone. He fell on his knees and cried and begged for them to save him, to try again, to do something. _I don't wanna die I don't wanna die I don't wanna die_.

Now he stares at the body and can't say anything at all, he can't think. His whole body goes limp, for the first time, he really feels like a ghost. He was always painfully aware of his body, he felt it even when he died, it was lighter, but it was there. Never in his whole existence, he's felt like he's feeling now, like powder or wind, like he's everywhere, his soul expands in the room. He sees Luther's corpse from thousands of different perspectives. He's around every book, every chair, and if he just let go of everything for a moment, he would be gone. He wouldn't be a ghost anymore, he wouldn't be anything at all. There's no bright light, no one his waving at him, encouraging to come with them.

It's just a moment, but time stops in it, and when it starts rolling again, Ben feels twenty years older, maybe more. "Bring me the serum." Reginald's voice echoes through the wall.

And with that, he's back in his body. He doesn't know if it's the way Reginald says it, or Mom's face, which is scared now, like something worse than death could happen, or the way Pogo's shoulder curves a little more, but doesn't want that serum anywhere near Luther. "What serum? What are you doing?"

Even Pogo, the blindly faithful Pogo, holds back. "Pogo" orders Reginald again. Pogo wouldn't hurt them, right? Pogo is good, is kind. Pogo hands Reginald the serum.

"Stop!"

And with that, it's done. Reginald stabs Luther with the needle. And everything goes quiet.

 

Luther doesn't wake up the next day, nor the one after that. The thought of leaving his bedside comes and goes many times in those days. What if Klaus needs help? What if his mind goes back to the mausoleum? What if he gets so stoned he doesn't understand what he is doing and starts running naked across the street? It's not like he hasn't done that in the past.

But every time he thinks that he looks at Luther's body and he sees the burns, even though Mom disinfects and bandages his wounds as soon as his pulse is regular again. Is that what Klaus sees when he looks at him, the way his body looked like when he died? No, it's not, he decides, mostly because he can't stand the thought of it. 

First of all, Luther is not dying, if anything he is healing, looking better and stronger with every passing hour, that's why Mom keeps changing his bandages every eight hours and no one seems concerned about him or stays with him more than five minutes.

They - Reginald, Mum, even Pogo- come and go, and no one says anything, no one stays, and it pisses Ben off so much he decides to speak because fuck them. They never showed anything that resembles real love, and they look like they don't care if one of them almost died.

So he talks, he talks like his life depends on it, like that's the only thing linking him to this world, as if stopping would make him vanish in the wind.

He talks about everything, he introduces himself to Luther all over again, as if they have never met before, and maybe they haven't, not really. He tells him about his favorite ice cream flavor and how much he likes to look at the ocean, he talks about dying and how to felt, how light he is after that.

He says that he still apologize when someone passes him through because he feels like bumping into them. He tells him all the stupid shit Klaus has done over the years and laugh, he says Klaus would kill him if he knew he is telling him all of this.

He tells him about their missions like Luther wasn't there with him, like he is not talking to Number One, and mocks him for his and Allison's relationship, telling how funny it was when they would try to hide their feelings from their brothers because they never fooled anyone. He admits to the bets he and Diego would do about each and every one of them, how he never got to pay Diego for some of those bets.

He talks about life and death and love and friendship and family and dogs and sports and vigilantes and the sky and God and anything that he can think of.

He talks for hours until his voice breaks or someone enters the room, because these words are for Luther and no one else.

He talks while Luther's hair grows and his body rises too fast for it to be considered healing anymore, and when it all stops, Luther doesn't look like the same person.

And when he wakes up, three days after the mission, Ben still hasn't talked about the monster inside him who still haunts him even if he's dead. He wonders if Luther has something like that inside of him too now.


	2. If I Could Make You Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben knows they have not been the perfect brothers to Vanya, but they haven't been what she made them up to be in her book either.

2014

"She wrote that? I can't believe she would do that" says Ben. Klaus shushes him, gaining some annoyed looks from the other people at the meeting. Ben doesn't even know what meeting this is, and he doesn't care.  
Klaus usually goes there when he is really desperate and wants some free food or if the court or whoever forces him to.  
He is not really sure this kind of thing helps his brother. Klaus would get shot before he opens up with a bunch of strangers, and he doesn't need to listen to any of these sad stories, he's got plenty of those between the deads, his siblings and his own traumas, and he doesn't even pretend to care as he shows up high or drunk, or both. He's been kicked out before just for that - Ben is not sure they can do that, no matter how annoying Klaus is, but he can't blame them.  
Most of the times however the volunteers in this place are kind and understanding, even when Klaus doesn't deserve it, which is more common than Ben likes to admit. Klaus is nothing like these people, they are actually trying to change their lives for the better. Klaus is just self-destructive, and won’t stop if the world depended on it. He knows it’s not good for him but thinks the alternative is worse, which makes him no different from any other junkie shitting himself in a dark hallway.  
This time though Klaus is not any of those things, he's not even that high, which Ben wants to consider a good thing, even though it's not. He's just sitting on his chair, reading the book like his life depends on it, and not listening to anything that's going on around him.  
He knows Klaus came just because he is out of money and hasn't eaten in two days, his only other option was stealing from some discount, which he already did two weeks ago, and Ben had steadily forbidden him to do that so soon.  
Hence, the book, and all the things Vanya wrote.  
Ben had found it just before the meeting started, maybe someone forgot it there, or perhaps it was the universe sending them a big "fuck you" right in their faces. Anyway, if he hadn't noticed it, it would have probably taken them months to find out. Klaus has never entered a bookshop, he doesn't have the kind of money to buy a book, not even this book.  
"Oh, don't mind me, please continue. You're doing great." Klaus says after a couple of seconds of uncomfortable silence, then he plunges right into the book again.  
It's not a bad book nor good, it's just filled with facts the public isn't supposed to know. All the family secrets, all the things they always tried to hide from the press, it's all there: the shocking details about their childhood, Five's disappearance, even Ben's death, she wrote all of it.  
It's unsettling, to put it lightly, she made them look like monsters.  
" _It’s not at all difficult to believe that my siblings learned cruelty from Dad until they eventually made it their own_? That's not true."  
"Just shut up already" Klaus mutters under his breath, trying very hard not to interrupt the meeting again. He might not believe in these things, but he respects who does.  
Ben rolls his eyes. Thanks to all the years spent dealing with Klaus' bullshit, both when he was alive and dead, he rarely loses his temper, but this is on a whole other level. It's misleading and could have some serious repercussions - they did plenty of illegal stuff as kids on missions, and now that she is portraying them as horrible people someone could decide to bring those things up again. Diego just graduated from the police academy, for fuck sake! Allison is always in the spotlight, and reporters can't wait to get a scoop on her.  
How could Vanya be so insensitive and selfish? She was always so kind as a child, where has that gone? She put everything on display, like a neon light saying "_This is our life, please feel free to take it and shit on it as much as you'd like!"  
When the meeting ends they are still reading, Klaus looks like he has no intention to move until he finishes it.  
"I relate to her too, you know." says a girl in a floral blouse, the one Klaus interrupted before, "I think a lot of us do." she is standing right in front of Klaus, who barely acknowledges her.  
Ben raises his eyebrows at him "So? Are you going to send her away or not?"  
He sighs exaggeratedly in his direction, then asks "What?"  
"I've read the book, I'm surprised she hasn't ended up an alcoholic herself," the floral girl says conversationally.  
"It wasn't that bad for her."  
"Are you joking? She ran away for a whole day, and no one noticed."  
"Is she serious right now?" Klaus doesn't even glance at Ben as he speaks.  
"Anyways, I'm Emily. I've never seen you before, how long have you been clean? It's fine if you don't want to say it." she greets him, offering her hand.  
"Klaus" he answers "and I'm not clean."  
"This should be fun" comments Ben laughing "How long until she figures it out?"  
"How strange, she too has a brother named Klaus who..." she pauses, and her face goes from smiley to shocked in about two seconds.  
"And here she goes."  
"She's smarter than she looks" Klaus smiles and gets up, a pleased expression on his face "Yeah, I'm gonna take this," he says, closing the book "Nice chat."  
Emily stares while they leave, managing to get herself together just before Klaus exits the door "You are a horrible brother!" she shouts.  
"Thank you!" Klaus shouts back, giving her the finger "What a bitch, am I right?" he says to Ben as soon as the door closes behind him. They are never going back to this center.  
"What a bitch." Ben agrees.  
  
The apartment is different from the mansion, but in a good way, he'll give her that. It's clean and small and functional, and just overall good. Nothing special, but nice anyway. It takes him a while to find it, he has never gone before, and they all look the same, it's like she wants everything in her life to be ordinary so that she can whine about that too. He's not sure what he's gonna do, a part of him wants to scare her as they do in the films: opening doors, throwing stuff around, flickering the lights, that would be pretty cool. He's not sure he can do that though, he's never tried, there was no reason to.  
"You're still awake, didn't expect that," he says. His sister is sitting on the couch, with a bunch of papers in front of her on the table. "Are those fan mails? Are you feeling appreciated enough now? All you had to do was selling your brothers and sister."  
She left the curtains open, and the moon illuminates everything, making the apartment look like some out of the world place, almost ethereal. Vanya seems even paler in that light.  
"Maybe those are hate letters. I can't understand why people would do that, we were just every kid's hero back in the days. People tend to stick to that kind of stuff."  
The last time he saw her, she was nineteen and Allison had just left home. He went to see them, begged Klaus to come with him, but he refused. Luther spent most of his days doing nothing, missing his favorite sister, almost unaware of the other one still living in the house.  
Vanya, on the other hand, always knew where Luther was and made an effort not to stand in his way. She would go to her room and play, or maybe in Five's or Ben's just standing there, almost waiting for something. In her book, she wrote it wasn't any different from what she did when everyone was still there, but that's a lie, she never looked for Ben when he was alive.  
Vanya hasn't changed much in all these years, she's as frozen in time as he is, but somehow she looks smaller than she was six years ago.  
"Maybe they are just bills you forgot to pay. Maybe you just destroyed our family further for no reason," he says and silences the part of his brain that reminds him there is not much to save there anyway. He's beside Vanya now, leaning on the couch just enough to see what she's reading.  
They are not letters, nor bills for that matters. It's one of those Umbrella Academy comics, the ones who made their lives look amazing and adventurous and made Reginald even richer and them famous. In this particular comic, comic-Diego says "I love you" after a mission and they all hug. That's ridiculous, Diego never said the L word to anyone, it would probably get stuck in his throat, maybe that's how he started to stutter in the first place. Is that really the idea people had of them? Vanya's book must have crushed their memories too.  
He remembers those comics, before them, they were Reginald's experiments, little monkeys no different from Pogo. When they went public, they became child superstars, they had comics and action figures and posters. Time for training lowered a lot then, they started going out of the house more, not only for missions but for interviews and photoshoot and conventions. Vanya was never invited. There were always fans at the door, Klaus and Allison would sneak out just to blow them a kiss and take the applause, even Ben felt proud about all of that. They were arguably the best months of their lives.  
Then Five disappeared and their public life with him. There were no interviews, no articles, they avoided paparazzi whenever they went out, and eventually, even fans disappeared. There was only training, harder than ever before. For months Ben could barely find the strength to get up every morning and go to bed every evening, he would see his brothers only at meals or when they trained together, and they were equally tired. It eventually faded away, and they came back to more human working hours, but for almost ten months, life was hell. That's when Klaus' addiction worsened, Diego closed himself up, and the team started to fall apart. Vanya never had dark circles under her eyes in those ten months.  
The comics came back when Ben died and then when Allison stared in her first big film and cyclically kept coming back ever since, but they never become quite as popular as they were when they were thirteen.  
"What are you doing with those? Why would you want to remember that?" he's not angry anymore, just confused. Then he sees Vanya soft shivering. It is small, he wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't so close to her.  
She's wrapped in a blanket and looks so small, her eyes are red, and he sees tears streaming down her face, she must have been crying for a long time, long before Ben came in. She hasn't sobbed once in all this time, Ben would have noticed a sob. She's alone in her own house, in pain but still acts as if she must not be seen.  
Did she do that at the academy? Did they make her do that? Suddenly Ben feels sorry about wanting to scare her.  
He sits on the table, right in front of her "It's okay, sis." he says softly, knowing she can't hear him. She wipes her tears and turns the page.  
The next page is just a big image of Five, arms crossed and a fierce expression on. He looks down on them like he's better than them. "He would have been, you know? That guy could have been the most powerful out of all of us if he just stayed," he says "Maybe your life would have been different too if he didn't..." he doesn't know how to end the sentence. No one ever talked about Five's death, they referred to it as a disappearance, but it went without saying. No one just runs for twelve years, especially not someone like Five "He would have loved your book."  
He never realized how much Five's disappearance had influenced Vanya until now. They never thought about how she felt about the Academy, about them, if anything they envied her. She seemed freer, the only who could actually have a normal life outside the Academy. They didn't know better, none of them except Five.  
Even when faced with Vanya's truth they refused to understand. Have they ever see Vanya cry? Has she ever let them? It would make sense if the only one to ever really see Vanya was also the one to go away first.  
Vanya is still crying, she reaches for her pills, "Will you ever approve these?" she asks to Five's picture, and for a moment Ben thinks she's talking to him.  
"What are you talking about?"  
"I need these, you know I do."  
"You sound like Klaus."  
"I wouldn't if you were here, you always knew what to say, but you left."  
"Vanya..."  
"I lost you." she's crying harder now, her whole body is shaking, and Ben can't remember the last time he's seen her like this. "Why did you had to do that?"  
She takes a pill and wraps herself further in the blanket, laying down on the couch.  
The room is quiet for a long time then; the silence interrupted only by Vanya's sobs soften by the pillow. Ben never minded the silence, he liked it, it was a precious good in the house, always full with screams, thumps, vinyl, violins, and noises. He used to sit in some isolated room and read. But this time he doesn't enjoy the silence at all, he craves sounds like Klaus craves drugs.  
"I wish I had been a better brother to you. But I'm not Five, and I can't become him." he can't look at her, so small, so fragile, he wishes she was invisible again so he wouldn't feel guilty to ignore her "There's nothing I can do for you. I'm sorry."  
As he goes away, back to Klaus and all his noises and loud cries for help, he promises himself, Vanya, and maybe the whole world, that if there's nothing he can do for his other siblings, he will do everything he can for the one sibling that'll listen to him.

The next morning Vanya wakes up alone on the couch, the comic still open on the table.  
Like every other morning, she closes the comic, washes her face, takes a pill and goes to the theatre.  
Like always, she's alone, no matter where she goes. She has stopped feeling lonely a long time ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to anyone who read the first chapter, bookmarked it or commented it, I'm so grateful to all of you and I can't believe you liked it. And I want to thanks everyone who read this second chapter too, of course. 
> 
> I'm not really happy with this one, it was more difficult to write than I expected. I think Ben and the others didn't realize how they treated Vanya when they were young, that's why they were so hostile to her at the beginning of the series, they probably thought she published her book so that she would be the center of attention, or that she manipulated reality so that she would have sympathy from other people. Allison it's the only one who tries to get better when she sees Vanya again, but she does that just because her own life path leads her to it. I think something like that must have happened to Ben too, but then again at the end of the day there's nothing Ben can do for her now and he knows that, so he'd rather help Klaus than watch Vanya suffer. I can't stress this enough, they're all pretty messed up, even Ben.  
> Also, shout out to littlehobbit13 on tumblr, who managed to understand what Extra Ordinary's pages on Episode 5 said, the quotes in this chapter come from their post.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back!  
> First of all, thank you for reading, hoped you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.  
> We know Ben and Klaus have a special relationship, of course, but Ben really cares for all of the Hargreeves clan and he shows it as the series progresses, and I can't believe he doesn't go see them at least once in ten+ years, so I decided to fix it in my own way: with a lot of angst, emotional hurt and characters canonically destroying their life.  
> Oh, and I'm on Luther Protection Squad and I think Ben and most of the siblings would be too.  
> See you next time, hopefully!


End file.
